1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to improved remote management and in particular to a method and an apparatus for accessing standard object identifiers using any one of a plurality of standard object identifier based protocol methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
An Object Identifier (OID) is an Internet standard mechanism for uniquely naming objects that represent information to be remotely managed. Specifically, this mechanism is called the Structure of Management Information (SMI). SMI allows a uniquely identified piece of management information (or object), and attributes of this object, to be retrieved, managed and monitored. Many network management protocols make use of this Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) SMI standard.
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely used network monitoring and control protocol that makes use of OIDs. SNMP agents report information from various network components, such as hubs, routers, and bridges, to a workstation console used to manage the network. This information is contained in a Management Information Base (MIB), which is a data structure that defines what information is obtainable from the network component and what can be controlled by the network component. SNMP is a simple protocol as it does not contain relations like the two protocols discussed next.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is another example of a management protocol that uses SMI OIDs. It is a simplified version of the X.500 standard. LDAP support is implemented in Web browsers and e-mail programs, which can query an LDAP-compliant directory. Queries in LDAP can be complex, such as the query for what printer objects can be accessed by a particular user object.
The Common Information Model (CIM) also describes management information in an OID format. CIM is implementation independent, allowing different management applications to collect the required data from a variety of sources. CIM includes schemas for systems, networks, applications and devices, among others. It also provides data mapping definitions for the use of SNMP data from within a CIM schema.
Currently if a server is processing queries using a variety of protocols, it must keep a separate repository of objects for each protocol. Often these repositories contain references to the same object, albeit with a different object identifier. If an object is being changed in different ways through two or more protocols, this can lead to inconsistencies. A single repository can eliminate such inconsistencies and save storage space since each object would only appear once.
Furthermore, because providing support for each protocol may be cumbersome to developers of management applications, some of these developers have resorted to only supporting one or a few of these protocols. Thus, not all objects, i.e. network resources, may be represented in each repository. As a result queries for objects not handled by the a particular protocol will not be able to be completed.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and an apparatus that provides a common repository for all OID-based objects regardless of the protocol scheme and yet still allow queries from each of a variety of protocols, such as SNMP, LDAP, and CIM/XML. Furthermore, it would be advantageous to make the repository easily expandable to accept existing OID-based data trees from a current repository and seamlessly integrate the new repository into the combined logical repository.